When Mia touched the crystal, her eyes started leaking wisps of blue glowing smoke, and she floated about fifteen inches off the ground as swirling blue motes of light surrounded her. It was a neat effect, but somewhat overused in games. It was a testament to how jaded Kyle had become as a gamer when something that would be mindblowing in real life could come off as trite and cliche for no other reason than that he knew he was in a game, even if he was seeing it in person.

Mia hung in the air for quite some time before Kyle got bored and started digging through help menus again. Being in close proximity to the crystal unlocked entries on race, class, and skills amongst other things. Kyle never really liked reading documentation; he mostly did at the start because he didn’t trust the makers of the game to have a good tutorial, and then when he mentioned it to Mia, it just sort of became his role in the group. Kyle supposed it could be powerful; he just knew things that other people didn’t. But on the other hand, it felt unfair that he was the one expected to do all the reading.

Then again, right now, the alternatives weren’t all that great. Jacob spoke with Dvorak about his past Youtube series and how much his boys adored him. Dvorak kept up that ridiculously overwrought streamer voice and basically acted like an idiot. Mason kept his eyes on the woods, looking somewhat impatient. Kyle wasn’t missing anything, and at least the docs were helpful.

About fifteen minutes after she touched the crystal, Mia stopped floating and fell to her knees. Kyle closed his menu and hopped to his feet to go make sure she was okay.

“How was it, Mia? Lots of text?”

When Mia looked up, Kyle started. Her face was different. Her features were more angular, her form was thinner. And her ears were… pointed.

“An elf? Really, Mia? I thought you’d be sickened by the cheap oversexualization.”

“I figured if I were going to be in this game for a while, I might as well be comfortable.”

“You consider being some prepubescent teen’s fantasy babe to be ‘comfortable’?”

“I consider being a healthy weight to be comfortable. You don’t know how it is with girls and body image.” Mia waved her hand dismissively.

“But you were fine before! You didn’t need this!”

“If that’s your idea of a compliment, you’ve got a long way to go.” Mia turned to the others, still waiting around near Dvorak. “Who’s up next?”

“I’ll do it,” Kyle said. “I’ve got a pretty good idea what I’m going to do.”

Kyle approached and touched the crystal. As he did, he felt himself floating off the ground as gravity somehow lost hold on him and his vision faded to blue. When the surrounding landscape finally became a uniform azure haze, a menu appeared in front of him. Kyle looked at his arms. They were translucent and ghostlike, but he could move them fine. Probably his body was being held in place, inanimate, as he took on some sort of spirit form to interact with the character creation and level-up menu.

Then, Kyle realized how weird it was that he considered the thing he left behind in the clearing to be “his body”. He had to keep reminding himself this was a virtual reality, not some place he had been actually, physically transported to.

He turned his attention towards the menus. He knew already what it was going to ask: It wanted him to pick an attribute to increase, a skill to learn, and a race to play as. It was also going to allow him the option to change his name, so when other players saw him in a party screen, he could represent himself as something different.

The first screen seemed to be the racial selection screen. In front of him, on floating buttons, were names of races. Some were familiar fantasy tropes; Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs were all there. Others were more obscure. Kyle would have had no way of knowing the “Jakarna” were a race of anthropomorphic tigers if he hadn’t read his help files. The rabbit thing was a “Lagotherre,” he now knew. He tapped the “human” button as it floated in front of him.

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To his surprise, a floating, semi-translucent figure of himself appeared behind the buttons, as well as a confirmation dialogue box below the buttons. Out of curiosity, he tapped the dwarf button.

The result was alarming. It was him, but different. The face was almost identical, but the cheekbones were lower and the chin was slightly too wide. The dwarf-kyle looked stockier, but not as stocky as he would have expected for a dwarf. Probably, it was factoring in how Kyle was gangly as a human and adapted the dwarf body to match. The dwarf was wearing Kyle’s starting clothes, re-adjusted to match the new form.

Kyle checked the other options. A dozen different variants of himself appeared as he pressed the variant buttons. A tall, knobby elven Kyle. A large, tusked, orcish Kyle. A Kyle he could somehow still recognize as himself buried beneath a tiger muzzle and striped fur.

Part of him ached to try out one of the other races. How cool would it be to be a tiger for a while? But on the other hand, he didn’t trust whatever interface he was using to represent the transformation correctly. It might not be like a real transformation; he might just be himself but graphically represented to others like a Jakarna.

Besides that, Kyle had a statement he wanted to make. He suppressed his desire to try out one of the other options and picked Human, then pushed “Confirm” before he could change his mind.

The next screen had a list of the four most stereotypical classes in the world; Fighter, Acolyte, Adept, and Rogue. He picked Adept, the spellcasters of his new world. From what he had read of the class system, it seemed to fit him best. He wasn’t keen on physical combat, so rogue and fighter were off the table, and he liked the arcane magic better than the acolyte’s divine magic. The help text suggested he could subclass later to specialize.

It gave him the option to increase one of his stats. Currently, they were all zero, having had no points placed in them. He picked “Resilience,” and saw the number increase before the system transitioned into the next screen. After having dealt with a dull ache from the goblin wounds the whole previous day, he was looking forward to the pain resistance a heightened resilience score would give him. The extra health was just a bonus.

It asked him what his name was. Kyle expected his name to be filled in by default, but it wasn’t. Rolling his eyes, he stuck his finger through a little microphone icon and said his name, slowly and clearly. It flashed a warning, notifying him this would be his only chance to change his name, and asked if he was sure he wanted to use his real name. This just confirmed Kyle’s suspicions. Kyle hit the button to accept, and mentally congratulated himself on picking Human as his race.

Finally, it gave him his choice of a skill. There were only about ten he could pick from, though Kyle knew from reading the help files that there were at least four dozen. The one he wanted, “Architecture,” wasn’t on the list. It must not have been “Magical” enough to be in the adept’s starting skill selection. Annoyed, he picked “Spellcraft” instead.

His surroundings started to fade back in after that. Remembering Mia’s unceremonious fall, he tried hard to pay attention to his balance and surroundings as gravity took hold of him once more. He managed to mostly keep his feet as he fell from floating, stumbling only a little.

“A human?” Dvorak asked. Kyle looked up and saw that the group had come much closer to the crystal while he was in menu-space.

“Why on earth would you choose the world’s most boring race?” Mia asked.

“It’s a message to the people running this place,” Kyle said. “They’re trying to disconnect us from who we are. They’re sticking us in a new world, with new people around us. They force us to kill something in the first ten minutes. They try to force you to kill the next three people you meet. They’re trying to give us new bodies. They warn you not to use your own name.”

Kyle knew he was angry, but again, he just didn’t feel it in his gut. He shook his head and kept up his tirade. “Have you noticed they’re even doing something weird with our emotions? I don’t know what’s up with that, either, but I suspect it’s also for some sort of dehumanization. Well I’m drawing the line. I am me, no-one else. Not a dwarf. Not a tiger. Just me, Kyle Steinson. My identity is the only thing they let me keep when they stuck me in this world. I’m sure as hell not going to give it up just because they offer me some pointy ears.”

There was a brief pause. Kyle found that understandable. He surprised himself with the ferocity of his rant.

Then Dvorak started clapping. Mason nodded appreciatively. Jacob glanced around, trying to see how others were reacting. Mia just shrugged. “Whatever. Suit yourself.”

Mason stepped forward. “Me next?”